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THE OUTLOOK 



FOR 



LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 



A LECTURE 



BY 



CHARLES W. KENT. 



/^^^' - ^ 






THE OUTLOOK 



FOR 



LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 



A LECTURE 

BY 

CHARLES W. KENT 



DELIVERED FEBRUARY 12th, 1892, BY INVITATION OF 

THE . YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, 

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE. 



Published by the 
LECTURE COMMITTEE OF THE Y. M. C. A. 



^. 






PREFATORY NOTE. 



He who prints must not expect to escape criticism, but 
he who criticises must not overlook the plan and purpose 
of the matter printed. This lecture, designed to be popular 
and delivered before a general audience, can make no claim 
to fullness of treatment nor aim at wealth of detail. The 
form in which it was delivered has been retained because to 
change it would be virtually denying, while apparently 
fulfilling, the wish of those, at whose request it is published. 



^■^B^^ 



s 



Fellow Members of the Y. M. C. A., Ladies and Gentlemen : 

When invited by the committee of the Y. M. C. A. to 
deliver a lecture in that series, which up to this time you 
have so much enjoyed, my interest in the cause the com- 
mittee represented and my desire to render their commend- 
able task as light as possible, constrained me to accept 
without hesitancy. To select some subject which would 
find in its development the mean between mere entertain- 
ment and severe instruction has given me more pause. I 
listened with interest to my honored * friend's easy recitals 
of his travels, and thought to supplement these by tales of 
journeying in other quarters of the world. When the world 
listened with hushed surprise and real grief for the mother 
and the bride, to the story of the death of the Duke of 
Clarence, my mind recalled the numerous members of royal 
families it had been my fortune to see, the many unprinted 
reminiscences I had gathered in the world's capitals, and I 
thought of this alliterative title, " Rambling Remarks about 
Royalty." Perusing with unfeigned pleasure Harold Fred- 
eric's charming account of "The Young Emperor," I remem- 
bered that I had once pleased an audience by a simple story 
about Berlin life. One by one these and other subjects 
presented themselves, and one by one they were dismissed. 
I grew bolder, and even threw aside the subject I had 
chosen and which the committee had announced, not from 
lack of interest in Sidney Lanier, not because I had misgiv- 
ings as to your interest in him, but because some of my 
Knoxville friends had already heard me talk of this great 
poet. The subject I have is one in which your interest can 
not be less than my own, and about which you probably 
know as much, but it is well for us now and then to call a 
council, deliberate upon what we have accomplished and 
read the tendency of our efforts or the goal toward which 



* Judge Ingersoll. 



4 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

we are drifting. I beg you then to follow me with patience 
as I rapidly sketch the progress we have made, and with 
symyathy aid me in seeking our part in the growth we still 
await. 

The Declaration of Independence, Avritten and signed by 
individuals, had in fact already been drawn up in the 
thoughts of the colonial settlers, written in their deeds of 
heroic bravery and signed by life blood spent in reclaiming 
their new homes and bulwarking them against impending 
storms. It took the concentrated power of the colonies to 
draught this declaration, and their minds, busied with this 
task, found little time for the milder occupations of letters. 
Nation building is absorbing work. A constitution, to last 
through a century or more of change and threatened dis- 
asters, tested by all the arts of peace and war, must be 
written in wisdom and sealed with reverence. No novice 
hand could pen such a paper. Men, whose faces had been 
plowed into furrows by deep-sinking thought, in their OAvn 
homes and around the council table, on the hustings and in 
the legislative halls, gave it their best and most strenuous 
attention. Around them gathered the best minds of those 
less gifted to lead, and thoughts that at other times would 
have been entrusted to the patient page, were deep cut in the 
palimpsests of the brain or branded into the very substance 
of the heart. And for years afterward, during the crucial 
days of the nation's experiments, there were needed all her 
men of talent and skill to read her destiny and direct her 
course. Virginia, a centre of political and intellectual life, 
answered her country's appeal for guidance with numerous 
men, whose tongues of fire with a hearty eloquence added 
no little to the fame of American oratory. Trenchant pens, 
guided by wise hands and driven by a rare intensity of will, 
wrote such political essays as the world has seldom seen. 
Statesmen were plentiful; men aspiring to be statesmen 
more plentiful still. The rewards of politics glistened, and 
men of brain-fibre and ambition felt the impulses to polit- 
ical life. Triumphs here were worth the trouble, while 
Virginians, reflecting English life, made little of the career 
of letters, and authors hid their real life — their literary 
activity — under the cover of some less important profession, 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 5 

and confessed with some tinge of shame, if they confessed 
it at all, that they were guilty of authorship. Virginia but 
aped English life, and all other Southern States took the 
standard of their living from Virginia. Indeed all America, 
although it declared its political freedom of England in 
the latter part of the 18th century and re-inforced this 
declaration by wars, took up no arms against the domination 
of English thought, sentiment or expression. Understand 
I am not setting over against each other English and Amer- 
ican Literatures, but I affirm that for some years after the 
beginning of the 19th century we were dependent upon 
England for our standards, for our audiences and for our 
very material. We had not sHpped the yoke of literary 
serfdom nor learned the best lesson in living, that of indi- 
viduality. There are or should be no geographical divisions 
in literature. Wherever the English tongue is spoken, all 
EngUsh literature is a precious boon. Compared with the 
nations of the earth we may be young in national life, but 
with the boldness of loving children, grateful to our mother 
from whom we were once estranged by over stringent man- 
agement, we reverently lay claim to all the products of our 
race's past. From Chaucer's lips I catch the music of his 
confident tongue, with naught save perchance the strange- 
ness of his words to forbid my calling him my own. 
Shakespeare's unrivaled genius lifts him far above clime 
or century and hails him a constant citizen of the world. 
The great line of his poetic followers have whispered to 
their melodious lyres the feelings that do crowd within my 
soul and live for me, fo» you, for all of us. Throughout the 
long line of writers of English prose, the chain of succes- 
sion from Alfred to the last author who watches the ink 
dry upon the freshly written manuscript, is unbroken and 
links us to our fathers indissolubly. But when all this is 
said, you feel and know that there is a closeness of kinship 
between you and the American writer that does not exist 
between you and these English authors. There is something 
that gives an American flavor to authors, who write within 
our land. What is it? No matter now, but it has not always 
existed. Even Irving, whose name we take so proudly 
on our lips, and whose fame has shed a lustre on 



b THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

our literature, was accused, often and not without some 
reason, of writing for English people, on English models, 
and often on English or foreign subjects. It is far more 
difficult to write a declaration of mental independence of 
the mother country than a declaration of political inde- 
pendence, and our first period of self-recognition and self- 
assertion was that of Emerson. In the South, about this 
time, Edgar Allen Poe represented our high point in poetry — 
as Lord Tennyson says, the highest point yet reached by 
American poetry — but Poe sought a congenial environment 
in cities further east. As the Virginian, Porte Crayon, said 
about this time : " I went to Richmond and no one took 
any notice of me. I went to Boston and everyone wished 
to have me to dinner. So I always go to Boston." Indeed 
the civilization of the Old South, as in the glib phrase of 
the day the ante-bellum South is known, was not congenial 
to authors and it was not adapted to literary production. 
The life was easy ; men had the leisure the world covets but 
knows not how to use, and comparative opulence, or at any 
rate creature comforts, took away from the slave-owners the 
dire necessity of bread-winning in the sweat of their own 
brows. Here, then, was the environments of quiet peace- 
fulness and heavy-hanging time, as favorable conditions for 
the author in his cushioned chair, with all around him 
books well-selected by his forebears and brought with them 
from England. But more was needed. Contact with man 
first of all. Praise as much as we will the simple virtue- 
giving qualities of rural life, proclaim as loud as we will the 
dependence of the world upon its country class, point as we 
will to the great men of all ages as country born, but it 
remains, that with few exceptions, the men who have risen 
to greatness have had, in addition to these advantages, 
which we agree in lauding, the living contact of soul with 
soul, and have beaten the smouldering iron of their minds 
into the white glow by striking them against other minds. 
The plantation life was too exclusive, too isolated, too little 
in touch with the world's heart throbs and pulse beats to feel 
the needed inspiration for giving mankind its thoughts, and 
its outer experiences were too circumscribed and provincial 
to appeal to a world of broad interests. Further, the very 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 7 

ease mentioned induced a kind of mental idleness. I chal- 
lenge the history of the world to point to examples of gentle- 
men whose moral tone, courteous manners and lordly bearing 
outstripped these. Nay, I go further and declare them 
unsurpassed in bravery, patient endurance and indomitable 
energy in time of need, but it remains true, I believe, that 
they did not crave mental activity for its own sake, but, if 
at all, for reasons of patriotism or ambition. Accustomed 
to be leaders in their own communities, undisputed heads 
of their own households, they felt their worthiness to lead 
in larger communities and control in places of greater 
responsibility. This was a time, too, that needed the active 
participation of all strong men in affairs of state. The 
coming events of the sixties were casting their shadows 
before them. We need not now go over the years of prep- 
aration for the bitter strife. The crisis of the tragedy was 
reached in the bitter war of words waged in the legislative 
halls, and the real war was but the bloody denouement — 
the fourth act of a fearful drama — whose fifth act was the 
dark days of reconstruction. Men with little prophetic ken 
foretold days of disaster, though few could divine its extent. 
Over the whole South the heavy atmosphere of a gathering 
storm weighed on a buoyant and resolute people, convinced 
that their rights were in jeopardy. Jefferson had long ago 
predicted disaster, if the evil of slavery were not peaceably 
removed, and hundreds felt more than they could express 
as they dwelt on the may-bes of the future. This was no 
time for literary expression, and Gilmore Simms, himself an 
intense Southener and prolific author, had uttered a deep- 
drawn sigh, re-echoed as we shall see in other forms to-day, 
couched in these written words : " No, sir, there never will 
be a literature worth the name in the Southern States, so 
long as their aristocracy remains based on so many heads 
of negroes and so many bales of cotton." 

The University of Virginia and her sister Southern 
institutions of less note, foreign universities and our 
renowned colleges in the East, had raised up in the South 
learned lawyers, eminent jurists, distinguished clergymen, 
scholarly professors, noted judges and cultivated gentlemen 
of leisure; but the want of literary sympathy, the more 



8 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

attractive goals of political ambition, the needs of the day 
and the circumstances of their lives repressed , rather than 
fostered the literary spirit, and left us without a literature 
worthy of our greatness. War has often been accompanied 
by song. While warriors fought, lyres strung to tauter 
tension and struck with trembling fingers have quivered 
with odes of duty, plaintive wails of saddening sorrow, 
praises of triumph or glory of success. But who shall 
touch these martial lyres, when grey-haired men call smooth- 
faced boys their comrades, and prayerful women nurse the 
feverish sick or dream of death's disaster? Hearthstones 
were ofttimes wet with tears shed in unselfish silence ; the 
face averted lest the bright countenances of children be 
clouded over with the shadow of grief. Amid it all, how- 
ever, this sorrow buried in the suff'ering heart found occa- 
sional resurrection in words attuned to the minor chord of 
pain. Randall's ''Maryland, my Maryland," Ticknor's "Vir- 
ginians of the Valley," and "Little Gifiin of Tennessee," 
Maria La Coste's " Somebody's Darling," and the poems of 
many others, including Mrs. Preston, Hayne, Timrod, Lucas, 
Thompson, were products of this period. May I repeat the 
name of John R. Thompson, that I may utter a sigh for 
the vanished life of this genial man of letters. How well I 
recall his kindly grace and childlike heartiness as he taught 
my prattling tongue the jingling rhymes that boyhood most 
affects. How often in my maturer days have I regretted 
that the love he then drew from me has sought in vain since 
his death for the collected proofs of his talent, that upon 
them it might continue to feed. Still uncollected and scat- 
tered, the numerous poems that he gave the world await 
some loving hand to garner them into a memorial sheaf. 
Simms' collection of "War Poetry in the South" and 
Mason's " Southern Poems of the War " preserve for us the 
meagre fruitage of these five years of brotherly dissensions. 
War over, new conditions and new adjustments followed. 
However philosophic the people, depressed by defeat it 
could not rebound at once. In patience it awaited the 
unknown and even unguessed solutions of problems created 
by the dangers through which they had passed. However 
hopeful or buoyant-hearted, those who had personally passed 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 9 

through the ordeal could not in the years immediately fol- 
lowixig the war feel their allegiance close-knit in the woof 
and web of the stars and stripes. National unity, saved as 
it had been by the sword, was not then felt a living thing, 
and the South's share in a common country seemed verily 
a younger brother's portion. No wonder then that the 
kindly art of the skilled physician — time — had to be called 
in to heal the wounds ere men could believe this country 
whole or themselves equal brothers in an equal heritage ! 
Great wonder that the cure was so soon completed. One by 
one the songsters found again their voices, which had been 
stifled by sobs or choked by frequent sighing, and regaining 
the consciousness of their own unsubdued ]30wer and their 
personal liberty dared express themselves once more in 
words. 

Of all the Southern poets since Poe, the second place to 
this erratic but brilliant genius will be claimed by critics for 
Hayne and for Lanier. Hayne, too overcome with feeling 
during the war to command wdth artistic skill expression, 
and hence appearing to better advantage in his poems of 
peace, fell short of the exacting critic's standard because of 
carelessness or haste or deliberate inattention ; but in spite of 
these he demanded an entrance, willingly granted, into our 
hearts by virtue of his poetic themes and ardor. Lanier 
erred, perhaps, on the other extreme, in over-refinement of 
expression. With an ear attuned far beyond the ordinary 
ear to co-ordinate sounds, as he would say, he tried to bring 
together in happy union what other poets wittingly or 
unwittingly had divorced — music and words. Whether he 
succeeded or not in this, let critics for the nonce discuss, 
while we add our patriotic voices to the tardy but ever- 
swelling acclaim of his greatness. Like Timrod he died not 
only before he had reached the acme of his triumph, but 
even before he made it clear how high he aspired to climb- 
Mayhap his success would have prevented his greater suc- 
cess since " the good is the enemy of the best." Perchance 
his own independence and his earnestness in poetic study 
would have quenched his spontaneous poetic fire, or perhaps, 
and this possibility enhances our loss, this deep insight and 
intense zeal would have added fuel to his natural flame till 



10 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

all the world had seen his light of genius. In what words 
shall we speak of the Poet-Priest, whom not by virtue of his 
religious post, but from our hearts of loving gratitude, we all 
call Father Ryan? 'Twas here in our city that he lived for 
a time and here that he wrote some of the poems, which like 
his blood, ran w^arm with his love of the Southland. His 
verses, brimful of tenderest feeling, fill our hearts with 
warmest love of him. John Pendleton Kenned}^, whom we 
hardly recall as a Southern writer, died in 1870, leaving 
behind him an array of works devoted to the South, but 
bequeathing to his people no great love for his writings and 
no marked enthusiasm for his old-time subjects. Wm. 
Gilmore Simms, the most prolific of all Southern writers, and 
hindered only by his participation in politics from being 
most nearly a representative professional man of letters, was 
and is still much read, but perhaps now as a matter of local 
or at best of historical interest. His life will soon be pub- 
lished in the series of the American Men of Letters, and it 
may be that this, prepared with great care and literary 
acumen by my distinguished college-mate and friend. Prof. 
Trent, will give a new impulse to the study of this author 
and send ns to school again to this adept in rapid story 
telling. If, as has been said, the best novel written in the 
South before the war was the "Virginia Comedians" by John 
Esten Cooke, surely it is not too much to say that the most 
vivid and interesting stories of the war, however unpolished 
and partisan, have been Avritten by the same gifted author. 
From these our dead authors, who have found cenotaphs in 
countless hearts, we turn to ask how stands it now with 
Literature in the South. 

What we desire first of all to know of a strange land is, 
wherein it differs from all other lands. Our young writers 
had their first hearing from Northern audiences and through 
Northern magazines, and recognizing this natural inquiry 
for peculiarities, answered it with scenes, provincial they 
may be, but characteristic and well known to those who 
drew them. Thus the Georgia crackers, the negroes par- 
ticularly in Virginia and Georgia, the Louisiana Creoles and 
the Tennessee mountaineers have found their way into our 
literature. When Cable first undertook to reveal to us the 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 11 

unique appearance, on the back-ground of American life, of 
Creoles and Creole surroundings, not only the acknowledge- 
ment of interest in this unknown life was at once forthcom- 
ing, but to this general interest was added, without stint, 
the praise he had wonb}^ his vivid and realistic portrayal, by 
his own artistic treatment of subjects near at hand and his 
own skill in infusing into local scenery and life a coloring 
resembling that which permeates world-literature. Even 
when we learned later that the very people he portrayed, 
stung to the quick, denied the truth of these clear pictures, 
we were inclined to attribute this repugnance to their natural 
sensitiveness and to an even more natural aversion, shared by 
all polite peoples to having their family secrets spied into. 
His photographs may have been accurate but his camera was 
not well placed to get the best results. But we would have 
forgiven the brilliant author these faults, if to his graver 
faults in our eyes he had not added a deep disappointment 
to our hopes. We were ready to hail a great Southern 
author, when by his own decision we were constrained to 
recognize instead a would-be reformer, whose efforts, spring- 
ing from principles ever so honest and deep-rooted, are 
condemned to futility by his own unwisdom and narroAV- 
ness. That to tell Creole stories and to offend Creoles are 
not synonymous, has been demonstrated by those stories 
written by an American woman but WTitten with more 
knowledge of higher Creole life and with more love for the 
subjects of her stories. Grace King's place in our literature 
is still unfixed, but her equipment and aims command our 
attention and her w^ork so creditable and promising in this, 
her young life, elicits our hopes and grounds our expectations. 
The very people whom these two novelists have described 
have themselves produced a literature of w?iich it is not 
mine to speak now, because it is in a foreign language ; but 
their education, their interest in art, music, literature, marks 
them, in spite of their allegiance to the French tongue, as a 
unique source of literary influence even upon the English 
writing authors of their communit3^ Many of them, more- 
over, masters of both tongues, do good service in transmit- 
ting the contents of one language to the other. 

Cable's Creole stories excited hardly more interest than 



12 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

those gems of genre-pictures held up to our view by Thomas 
Nelson Page. Adjudged as they have been by competent 
critics worthy to hang upon the Academy w^alls of our 
Literary Art, they were, we thought at first careful, shall we 
not say perfect studies worked out with detail and with finish, 
but yet only studies for some greater and more complete 
painting of our ante-bellum days. As yet these little 
glimpses of the relations between the negro and his master 
— glimpses so life-like and real, that we seem to have seen 
them often in our own prosaic lives, have remained isolated, 
and we await with patience the fuller record of this old time 
life — the specific antidote to the poisonous general infer- 
ences of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." The genial Grady, whose 
untimely death left such a vacancy in our South, pointed to 
Page himself as the possible author of this needed w^ork. 
Around Page and his fellow-worker, Armistead Gordon, have 
gathered others in Virginia, who have sought to eml)alm the 
memory of these fast fading relations. A similar task has 
been assumed in Georgia with scarcely less success by Harry 
Still well Edwards, who, talented beyond his probable con- 
jecture, takes his literary work too lightly and hence neg- 
lects this art for more prosaic duties. 

We wonder now why any one of thousands of us had not 
thought of collecting and editing the negro stories which 
crooning mammies had whispered in our ears at so early a 
date that we seem always to have known them. But per- 
haps it is well that no one else undertook to complete the 
myth-history of this race, for it is now apparent that Joel 
Chandler Harris was suited by knowledge, instinct and sj^m- 
pathy for the work he so successfully accomplished. Nor 
did he exhaust himself with this supreme effort. The 
Edinburgh Review, in a recent article on American litera- 
ture, or more exactly, fiction in America, has placed high 
among the names it praised that of Miss Murfree, best known 
to fame as Charles Egbert Craddock. I am aware that in 
this immediate vicinity her works, while much read, are not 
always commended. It would be presumptuous in me to 
take any part in the discussion whether or not her dialect is 
true to life, but let me remind those, who deny it, that there 
is more in these novels than misspelled words and uncouth 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITEEATURE IN THE SOUTH. 13 

sentence? ; tar more than merely local interest. There is 
richness of scenery, vividness of description, a wealth of 
detail and a skilful command of some of the resources of 
our language. To me, the gravest literary fault in her 
books, as compared with each other, is — a fatal sameness — 
a lack of sharp lines of differentiation, and hence an un- 
avoidable confusion of characters and localities, which 
begets mental tedium. Bearing in mind that the names I 
have mentioned are but guides to your memory in recalling 
some of the groups of our recent writers, you are ready, I 
trust, to hear the report of an humble sentinel on the walls 
as to the prospect of letters in the South. By the obliging 
courtesy of friends, in many instances far better able to 
speak to you on this 'theme, I bring you news from various 
States, and where these friends have failed me my own 
incomplete information may suggest some thoughts. In 
Virginia, the interest in literature, inherited from our fathers, 
who brought this interest with them, has never waned, but 
attention to production is perhaps more earnest to-day than 
>ever before. The novels of Misses Magruder, Baylor and 
McClelland are well known, while the name of Amelie Rives 
was a few years since on every one's lips. Her recent senti- 
mental effusion, " According to St. John," and her strong 
play, " Athelwold," in the last Harper's, give the measure of 
her power. From lyric grace in the story of "Anion" to mascu- 
line fierceness in "Herod and Mariamne," from the well told 
story of a "Brother to Dragons" to her much praised prose idyl 
"'Virginia of Virginia," her pen glides leaving here its deep 
writ lines of genius, there writing the death-sentence of 
maiden modesty, now fixing in imperishable form some 
poetic thought, now reveling in a ruthless disregard of all 
the world's conventionalities. Notwithstanding her oft 
misdirected genius, her crudities and her whims, and despite 
her carping critics, Amelie Rives is, in my opinion, and for- 
give it if it seem to you too heterodox, the most brilliant, 
versatile and talented woman who has appeared in the realm 
of literature in recent years ; and while I neither condone 
her glaring faults nor commend alike all her works, I con- 
fess my deep interest in her career and my ardent hope for 
her eventual success, which shall not be sensational nor 



14 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

ephemeral but honestly earned and abiding. Mrs. Margaret 
J. Preston, who wrote poems that long ago charmed our 
mothers, as anxious to-day as ever that our Southland should 
love literature for its own sake, wearies her old age with new 
proofs of her constancy to letters ; while younger singers, 
Duke, Coleman, the Gordons, and others with manly voices 
add to the chorus of verse. Two events of literary moment 
are worthy of your especial attention. The one is the 
appearance of the "Life of Patrick Henry," by his grandson, 
William Wirt Henry, which takes its place at once as one 
of the best biographies written in America ; the other is the 
recent appointment of Thomas Nelson Page as one of the 
editors of Harper's Monthly. The Editor's Drawer of this 
great magazine will hereafter be edited in Richmond. Page, 
as nearly all the men who are active in literature in Virginia, 
are loyal sons of her State University, which, at all times 
since its foundation a centre of intellectual influence, a 
light-house shedding beams upon the South, a fountain 
of knowledge from which constant streams have flowed, is 
daily increasing her usefulness and has of late supplied a 
deficiency which was allowed to exist too long, by electing 
a professor of English. 

The old North State (North Carolina), our nearest neigh- 
bor, besides giving to our nation some writers, notably the 
present editor of the Forum, Walter H. Page, and Miss 
Fisher, who, as Christian Reid, has become a household 
name to all lovers of our bordering mountains, is showing 
in various ways its interest in literature and progress. 
There are few more ardent students than the professors of 
English in her institutions, and through their lectures and 
examples literary clubs, particularly devoted to Shakespeare, 
have grown up in the leading cities. Charleston, South 
Carolina, one of the exclusive cities of our continent, has 
always enjoyed a reputation for culture and its college and 
its libraries, besides its traditions, incite within it an abiding 
love of books. Columbia, the seat of institutions of learn- 
ing, has of late been the centre of a religious discussion, 
which has made thinkers and partisans of the large body of 
intelligent people. While the conservative nature of the 
State and its cities has kept it and them in some respects 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 15 

out of line with the Sonth's progress, in all that pertains to 
culture, it claims its place, where it has ever stood, near the 
front. It is not out of place to add that the lamented 
Dawson, as editor of the News and Courier, in his day one 
of the very best of our Southern papers, lent every encour- 
agement to literary production and was hopeful of the out- 
look. His compeer, and with Waterson, his only rival, 
Henry Grady (of Georgia), was in this sphere, as in every 
other where his interest went — and where did it not go? — 
a moving spirit. Through the columns of his paper many 
a first effort found its way to the public, and under the 
smile of his favor many an abashed author learned to lift 
his head. Around him centred too the writers of his State, 
and all praised his friendliness as much as his brilliancy 
and loved him more for his own cheerful and self-sacrificing 
aid than for the glory which he brought his land. With 
views far-seeing and extensive for his country's w^eal, he took 
to heart all plans devised for the education and upbuilding 
of his people, and I have heard him gladly claim that his 
paper had been instrumental in filling the State wdth copies 
of good books. A wide and thoughtful reader, he knew the 
deep and prevailing power of good reading to elevate the 
people, and should the sum of his benefits to his State ever 
be cast, the love of literature he inspired will be no paltry 
item. The policy of the paper, guided by the hands of those 
who walked and talked wdth Grady, has not swerved, and 
to-day represents an earnest support of all the literary 
endeavors of the State. State pride, energy and progress 
unite to form the basis of a self-recognition, and from this 
will come a fuller, freer recital of the story of the State and 
the record of its people. 

Of our national casino — balmy Florida — there is little to 
be said, and could it be said, there would be little guarantee 
that it fell within the province of this lecture, for the float- 
ing nature of her population leaves the question of citizen- 
ship most often unsettled. 

Alabama has, throughout its history, had several literary 
centres, and these have transmitted to each generation the 
traditions which perpetuate the influence of these cities. 
Mobile, the home to-day of some dozen contributors to gen- 



16 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

eral literature, lays special claim to Augusta Evans Wilson, 
whose name and works have been before the public for a 
number of years but whose pen is not yet allowed to rest ; 
and to DeLeon, who to his clever travesties and spirited 
novel, has recently added his most serious work, " Four 
Years in Rebel Capitals." Tuscaloosa and Greensboro 
harbor authors, while the Montgomery Advertiser and the 
Birmingham Age-Herald are active in fostering literature, 
attracting to their colums new contributors and forming 
nucleuses of literary guidance. Where so much can be 
found more will arise and brighter day will follow such a 
dawning. 

In a letter from Mississippi I read that there is more dis- 
position to literary production now than at any time pre- 
vious, and it is natural that this should be in a measure due 
to the revived interest in the State University. 

The most peculiar city in our Union, as far as they are 
known to me, is New Orleans, Louisiana. It locks within 
its crescent more that is strange to. other parts of our 
country and incorporates more varied elements of life than 
any city in our land. The lines of diverse natural equip- 
ments, varied trainings, strange experiences, cross more 
frequently, nay, are rather knit together more closely, and 
this constant contact of unlikes is exciting and inciting. I 
will not say that from such mixtures the best writing comes, 
but I do say that much writing of various kinds will 
and must come. The standards generally applied may be 
too rigid for this anomalous life and standards may be 
sought to suit this composite city. In any event New 
Orleans is giving us authors of sketches, poetry and novels, 
and the numbers of her authors will increase. It is a source 
•of gratulation, I take it, that Tulane University, represent- 
ing a high order of scholarship and excellent literary taste, 
has had a marked influence in bringing the chaotic intel- 
lectual life of the city into order and is counted a central 
point around which the literary elements may rally. Within 
the last six 3'ears numerous organizations of literary char- 
acter and of commendable zeal, especially among the 
women, have been formed, and are greatly benefiting the 
city. Outside of New Orleans the writer most worth your 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 17 

attention, as far as I am informed, is S. H. James, whose talent 
far transcends his style. He is, however, hopefully conscious 
of his defects, and is laboring assiduously to remove them. 
If to his charming insight into child-character and his deep 
love for children, to the distinctness of his personages and 
the vividness and verve of his descriptions he will add a 
finished and a polished- style, his State will in no wise limit 
his recognition. Why more is not done in the State at large 
is clear from this well-worded wail : '' Much of our State is 
devoted to making cotton and cane, and a lottery seems to 
our people of more importance than a literature." 

In Arkansas the names are numerous but their fame is not 
far-reaching. These names, however, and many literary 
organizations prove that the soil is kind and may bring 
forth good fruit. 

Kentucky's pride in her writers has been described to me 
by one of my correspondents as a kind of general State 
pride but founded upon far less knowledge of the good points 
of a writer than of the good points of a horse. Whatever 
the nature of this pride there is legitimate reason for its 
existence and it centres to-day around two writers, James 
Lane Allen in prose and Robert Burns Wilson in verse. 
Both are frequent contributors to magazines and from both 
we expect more in quantity and quality than they have yet 
given us. James Lane Allen's magazine sketches, now col- 
lected into book form, solicit our interest in him as well as 
in them and justify the pride of his own State in this her 
most gifted litterateur. The Courier- Journal has not only 
breathed upon the literary spirit of the State but has gath- 
ered into its warm sanctum several of the possessors of this 
spirit. From no State has the testimony to general progress 
been stronger than from Kentucky. James Lane Allen, the 
best exponent of the State's literary life, writes me : " The 
outlook for Kentucky literature is better at this moment 
than any in the past— both in the way of its being produced 
and in the way of a sympathetic fostering audience." Miss 
Higbee, who attracted much attention by her story, "In 
God's Country," and who is now on the staff of the Courier- 
Journal, remarks : " There is a good deal of activity and 
the general outlook is both in interest and production 



18 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

promising." Another correspondent, a lady, says with 
pardonable pride of her sex : " I believe there is a forward 
move — more manifest amono; the women than the men." 

And now what of our own State, Tennessee? May I speak 
more in detail? The division of our State into three parts has 
been, unfortunately and injuriously, emphasized until it has 
become almost impossible to speak of our State without a 
tacit recognition of this position. Deploring the necessitj^ 
I venture to use this well understood division to sa}'^, first, 
that in AVest Tennessee, outside of Memphis and perhaps 
several smaller towns, interest in education seemed to me 
anything but encouraging. Indeed mj^ observations in that 
part in general showed far less interest there than in either 
of the other sections. Memphis, thanks to the munificence 
of a former resident, is now building the finest library 
building in the State, and this library, assisted by the edu- 
cational institutions in the city, will do much to further the 
general intellectual life. I have not been able to learn 
wdiether there is at present any tendency to literary pro- 
duction. 

Middle Tennessee contains our best known writers and is 
at present more thoroughly committed to literary work than 
any other part. That all the production is not of a high 
value is evidenced by the fact that of three hundred manu- 
scripts read b}^ one of the editors of the Nashville American, 
nearly all were rejected. Nashville's literary life is worthy of 
commendation. It is a cit}^ of educational institutions and 
literary clubs and full of appreciation of literary movements. 
The centre of its intellectual life is unquestionably the 
Vanderbilt University, and for general literature some of the 
leading professors are filled with interest and enthusiasm. 
The good work this institution and others in Nashville 
are doing to advance education and foster fondness for 
letters is a matter of State pride. In Shelbyville I have 
found a public library, and in Columbia, Lewisburg and 
other points deep interest in education. Murfreesboro owes 
its literary note to Charles Egbert Craddock, whose fame is 
associated with it, and it seems to be destined to attract 
hardly less attention on account of the novel of the younger 
Miss Murfree. The demand, which is now made upon 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 19 

novelisti^, that the marriage of the heroine shall not be the 
last chapter, but that married women shall be eligible to 
places of importance in the realms of romance, is answered 
legitimately and with interest, I am told, by her story, 
"Felicia."" 

One of the most praised of recent serial stories was 
" Jerry," and the surprise was keen when it was revealed 
that this story emanated from the pen of Miss Elliott, of 
Sewanee. Here, too, is the scene of the literary labors of 
Prof. Trent, from whom his friends expect the full realization 
of his promise of effort and achievement. The Monteagle 
Assembly attracts many strangers and acts as an annual 
leaven in the mass of visitors, who become learning's 
missionaries in this and other States. The literary confer- 
ence held there last summer was of unusual interest and no 
doubt accomplished great good. 

The material progress of East Tennessee has thrown it 
into such a turmoil of bustling activity that it is difficult to 
foretell what the outcome may be. Chattanooga has 
attracted many men of literary culture, but they have 
not come fur literary purposes and hence little concentration 
of literary activity is to be found. You will pardon my pride 
in reporting otherwise of the literary centre of East Ten- 
nessee. It would not be becoming in me to speak of our Uni- 
versity further than to avow its interest in the upbuilding of 
man, in all his faculties of body, mind and soul, and to record 
that no one of the members of the literary faculty has lost 
his interest in English letters, while several have themselves 
been authors. Of our city life it can be said that however 
much it may fall short of its duty, such organizations as the 
Ossoli Circle and the Irving Club have had a direct influence 
upon their members in fostering their love of letters, 
cementing their copartnership of interest in the literary 
world, fostering the literary spirit and lending encourage- 
ment to production. A further influence these organizations 
have had by their examples, from which have sprung the 
Stanley Club, the clubs in North Knoxville, West Knoxville 
and South Knoxville, the '92s, the Young Ladies' Reading 
Club, &c., (fee. Two years ago I was told that it would be 
impossible to get an attendance of two hundred upon any 



20 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

literary lecture ; now lectures of merit, when duly announced, 
attract good audiences and are daily becoming more popular. 
The reports of our libraries show that reading is rapidly 
becoming more general, and since our libraries are stocked 
only with good books, this means that good reading is 
becoming more universal. As to production, in literature 
proper, I omit books of history or of a technical nature, 
you are aware " That Lass o' Lowries," one of the best 
of the creations of its celebrated author, was written while 
Frances Hodgson Burnett was a resident in our city. Prof. 
McAdoo, in his earlier days, wrote man}" poems and has not 
yet lost his ardour for the muse, while his gifted w^ife has 
been an inspiration to her 3"ounger sisters in letters, not only 
by her counsel and advice in her position of influence in 
their organization, but also by her keen appreciation of 
letters and her contributions to its domain. W. N. Harben, 
now one of the editors of the Youth's Companion, was until 
recently with us. His work, in spite of much deforming 
crudeness, has found both financial and literary recognition. 
There are others whose works deserve mention, but the 
modesty of whose lives and whose desire not to be known 
have made them withhold their writings from the public 
and hence from public criticism. At present our most 
serious and most commendable literary work is being done 
for various magazines by J. W. Caldwell, who, in the midst 
of overcrowding legal duties, finds time to show his friends 
how much we have lost in that he did not devote his life to 
letters. Nor must I forget Mrs. J. C. Malone, East Tennes- 
seean by birth and attachment, but in her work for various 
papers a citizen of the broader world of children's love. 

The modesty and reserve with which Miss Whiting 
received the hearty congratulations of her friends will, I 
trust, take no ofi'ense that now, in justice to our city, we must 
congratulate ourselves that one of our number, in a contest 
open to the world and entered by over two thousand, should 
have won the prize ; a prize doubly dear because many of 
her competitors have established reputations of more years 
than number her short life. She has surprised us by show- 
ing us her success before we knew of her effort. Now that 
we know her aim and aspirations, we await with eager 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 21 

expectation the maturer fruitage of her power, and wish her, 
with all sincerity, the health and sympathy needed for the 
assurance of her broader triumph. 

The patience with which you are hearing me is another 
proof of your interest in letters, and that patience I shall 
tax but little longer. The pessimistic cry has several times 
been heard of late, that after all has been said it remams 
sadlv true that nothing of import has been produced and 
that" there seems to be no outlook for any definite improve- 
ment. That in the multitude of books and articles now being 
written in the South a large proportion is practically 
worthless, or at most of but ephemeral interest, is unques- 
tionably true. That we can not yet point with assured 
confidence to any recent work and say of it— it will live, is, 
I believe, a fact. But, ladies and gentlemen, what, I pray 
you, means this activity in production ; this general interest 
in letters, if it may not at least be interpreted as a promise. 
How shall we count these hundreds of studies, if some artist 
will not arise to group them in some ever-living picture? I 
am aware that the merit of authorship can not be tested by 
the age of authors, nor the interest in writing by the number 
of writers, but is it without significance that my roll of per- 
sons now resident in the South and contributing to literature 
contains some hundred and fifty names, and that by far the 
majority of these persons have not yet reached middle age? 
Yet this hst is very defective indeed, does not aim at com- 
pleteness, nor does it contain those like Maurice Thompson 
Lafcadio, Hearn, Walter Page, who, born in the South and 
of her blood, have, like hundreds of others, sought a more 
congenial literary atmosphere. Recognizing the advance of 
our educational institutions and pointing specifically to 
their influence upon our intellectual life, may we not hail 
them as another aid to the development more coveted by me 
and thousands of others for our Southland, than the mere 
upturning of her soil, which buries hidden wealth. 

Believing then in the possibilities of our future, in no wise 
despairing of far brighter days, how shall we hasten them? 
First, by nreserving as pure as possible, under existing cir- 
cumstances, our American institutions. We represent to- 
day the true successors of the Anglo-Saxon founders of our 



22 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

countr}^ and hold within our borders the ark of our nation's 
covenant with the world to preserve the principles of rep- 
resentative government and the privileges of religious 
freedom. The teeming millions of immigrants, foreign to 
these principles, foreign to these privileges, foreign to our 
language and foreign to our ideals of home and patriotism, 
have not yet sought in large numbers our Southern country. 
We are not yet confronted, save in isolated cases, with the 
problems of foreign elements, nor do we hold the sacred 
heritage of our language by the leave of un-American school 
boards or scheming politicians. While in 1880 — and the 
figures in 1890 would be more striking — the twelve Southern 
States of which I have spoken contained about 160,000 
foreign-born voters, the other States contained nearly 
2,910,000. Exclusive of Kentucky and Texas, the foreign- 
born voting population is less than 80,000. Comparing the 
entire population, we find that these twelve Southern States 
contain about 320,000 foreigners, while the other States 
contain about 6,170,000. If we compare half a dozen 
literary centres in the North and West, say Boston, New 
York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Providence and Cambridge 
with the same number in the South, say Richmond, Charles- 
ton, Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville and Louisville, we find 
that of the first about one-third are foreign-born, of the 
latter less than one-ninth. If you ask what mean these 
figures, which can be arranged in multiform ways to reveal 
this striking difference, I answer simply this, that the 
American-born population, nay more, the population whose 
fathers and grandfathers before them were born in this 
country, represent the strongest upholders of our govern- 
ment, the most steadfast believers in our national ideals, 
our m^ost patriotic citizens, and ^bove all the most unyield- 
ing lovers of our national tongue and literature, and that 
the South contains by far the larger relative percentage of 
this native-born population. I say it guardedly and with 
deliberation, that since the questions of constitutional inter- 
pretation were settled — and forever by the war, the South 
represents as loyal, a« loving and as patriotic a people as 
can be found in our Union, while take it as a whole, it is 
more representatively American than any section of like size 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 23 

or population. But let us confess it as Americans and for 
all sections that some of the lessons of unselfish devotion 
to country and high ideal patriotism we have yet to learn. 
Rally then around your flag, and next to its spotless honor 
place, as DeQuincy said to young poets, your mother-tongue. 
Look with the same distrust on him who purposely blots a 
star or blurs a stripe of our national emblem and him who 
disgraces with design our medium of thought by sending 
through it to our people messages unworthy, impure, dis- 
honorable, in a word inconsistent with the noble purpose 
and high ethical qualities of our English Literature. Love 
your language and your literature alike, and spurn the 
attempts to pollute the purity of our Anglo-Saxon minds 
by pouring into them the unclean imaginings of disordered 
brains or the filthy washings from the exhaustless quarries 
of foreign immorality. Be not prudish but prudent, not 
callous but careful, and let the world know that in the South 
the literary taste is still delicate and refined; that the 
standards of morality have not been lowered to suit the new 
demands of a faster living age ; that these standards are 
based upon Anglo-Saxon thought and Anglo-Saxon mor- 
ality and that they do not vary with the vacillating surface 
of a foreign and un-American public. 

To maintain this position we must have with us inde- 
pendent critics, self-sustained leaders of thought. "The 
original voices are few, the echoes are numerous." The 
men who have the firmness and the brains to judge, i. e. to 
criticise for themselves, will soon find themselves centres of 
dependent groups. Holding before you the objects of true 
criticism — an accurate and appreciative discrimination 
between the good and the bad, a devotion to truth in judg- 
ments and a fidelity in making these judgments known, you 
understand that the true critics are inciters to thought and 
evangelists as well as discoverers of it. They mark out for 
us the paths our guides have gone and show us our tenden- 
cies and our wanderings. To my mind the presence of 
loving but rigidly honest and unswervingly impartial critics 
in the South is one of the most essential conditions of our 
literary future. Critics, who will rebuke me first of all, if I 
have used the word "South" in this lecture as any other 



24 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN TH£ SOUTH. 

than a geographical term ; who will teach me and every one 
that there is no sectionalism in letters ; that there can arise 
no true writer, if the scope of his sympathies be no broader 
than his State or his section ; that much less can he be a true 
author, if his hand or his mind be against his brother. At 
the same time these critics must teach us respect for the 
judgments of those nearest to us, if they deserve it, and erase 
from our minds that false impression that only a northern 
stamp will guarantee the currency of our southern writings. 
From these, too, we must learn that though our classics 
must be catholic, appealing to all, the best way to attain to 
this catholicity is by expressing our own thoughts in our 
own best form. Freed from the dominating sway of self- 
appointed judges, unhampered by models, which we try in 
vain to imitate, our minds must work out their own prob- 
lems along the lines of their own best thinking, or make 
known their messages in their own chosen way. My life, or 
yours, however dull it may be, contains in its heart the germ, 
the spirit of all life, and if an artist can rightly reveal it, the 
world beholds the mirror of its own intensest living. There 
are a thousand themes around you that may catch the 
world's listening ear, if you can but utter them aloud, and yet 
a thousand artists may miss them all and find other themes 
of as .much importance. Write it then deep in your hearts 
that our themes, our material for this world-embracing 
literature, are before us, are around us, are within us, and 
with no more pride than is becoming, appreciate j^our own 
opportunities. These critics must not only be fair-minded, 
l)atriotic and sympathetic, th^y must be equipped by natural 
endowments and careful training for their responsible posi- 
tions of thought-moulding. If cramped, narrow, badly- 
read or sectional, the more power they have the worse it 
will be for our people. But if broad, philanthropic, well- 
read in the world's best lore and yearning to know the best 
the world has yet brought forth, their inspired souls will, with 
inspiring succor, cheer up the lagging and despairing cow- 
ards and breathe into the failing throng the fire of undaunted 
courage. But if our leaders are to be such men they must 
be educated by contact with nature, man and books, and 
above all must know, as the harpist, when his hands play 



THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 25 

over the answering strings, the tune, the power and the timbre 
of his delicate instrument, the English language. He must 
know its problems as well as their solutions, its shortcom- 
ings as its glories, and must, with discriminating but with 
fearless hand, prune and pluck off, nourish or destroy. In 
all he should exact that we should do our best, not palm off 
tawdry counters for genuine coin upon an unsuspecting 
and long-suffering public. Who shall be these critics and 
how many do we need? As many as we can get, provided 
they take their work seriously, and let them be who they 
may, if only they know their duty and follow it. 

Another demand is for broader and closer reading — a 
more thorough acquaintance with books and a more univer- 
sal identification with literary matters. The minds of 
those who make opinions must be fed upon strong and 
nourishing pabulum. Those who catch all their opinions 
from associates must be particularly careful of their literary 
associations. The sum total of these opinions is public 
sentiment, and public sentiment is, after all, the foundation 
upon which we build. 

In shaping public sentiment and fixing literary standards, 
the work that can be done by newspapers is beyond estimate. 
For that reason it has given me pleasure to record that 
several of our Southern papers are not only encouraging 
production and giving an outlet for local literary talent, but 
are pointing out good books, providing for literary criticism 
and aiding in many ways in the direct or indirect dissemi- 
nation of good literature. Honesty compels, me, however, 
to say that the majority of our papers, as it seems to me, 
have not taken seriously this essential duty of their modern 
mission. So potent in other good works the press, religious 
and secular, owes it to the people to guide them here into 
right paths and encourage them in well-doing. 

That there are obstacles to our intellectual growth now, 
such as the rapid accumulation of wealth, the need of men 
of action, our utilitarian philosophy, and our dollar-standards 
and lightning-methods of education, you well know, but the 
signs that are for us are.more, far more, than those that be 
against us. Throughout our land methinks I catch the 
gladdening murmur of a deeper patriotism as lovers of our 



26 THE OUTLOOK FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOUTH. 

country bend toward each other to whisper of her dangers. 
The spirit of our land is still American and the deep-centred 
love of our homes was never stronger than it is to-day. 
Throughout the South, I read, I hope aright, a deeper 
interest in our common country and a fuller feeling of right- 
ful partnership and owning. Our true place in the Union 
becomes, to our own minds, more fixed each day, and but 
for the fiery outbursts of some designing politicians, whose 
chiefest argument is force, no word would mar the closeness 
of our brotherhood. And of this Union, where will you find 
a fairer part than this our matchless Southland, where, with 
the murmur of the purling" brooks, that kiss in humble love 
our giant mountains' feet, the chorus of the woodland song- 
sters unite in perfect harmony; where skies of blue are 
mirrored in the dew-drops on blossoming flowers, which lift 
their tiny heads to greet the rising sun and laugh with joy 
in the pride of life, while mocking birds, mad with their 
own delight, revel in song which scorns the written score. 
Shall the poet of nature here lack themes or find no cause 
of song in his surroundings? Is there no fire on the altars 
of inspiration from which the poet-heart may pluck a living 
coal? And should he yearn to write a people's epic, whether 
in verse or in the modern form of fiction, is there a dearth 
of heroes or a lack of instance in our past history which 
yet awaits its record? Go, friends, one and all; say to 
your own souls and to your neighbors that our land 
is as worthy as any that ever felt the kiss of breaking 
day to be enshrined within our hearts and borne from 
those hearts to the utmost limits of an encircling globe upon 
the breath of an ever-living literature. Chill nbt your hopes 
with sad complaints or prophecies of failure but with an 
ardor which shall not shame the land you love join in 
the throng of those whose prayers and labors do unite to 
crown the waiting brow of our Columbia with the laurel 
wreath of literature triumphant. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




